https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Ulver/Flowers_of_Evil/853749/Avestriel/65857
Lets deconstruct this: paragraphs 1-4 are about the history of the band in language so pretentious that would be at home in early 2000's Pitchfork reviews, paragraph 5 is a review of the music itself (which I'll dissect in more detail in a moment) while paragraph 6 is just "Garm's lyrics suck" drawn out for 200 words and it ends with "Ulver are artistically dead".

The thing is the review of the music itself is just shit - it's someone naming random things trying to make out that they’re knowledgeable but they really aren't and as someone who actually does like a lot of synthpop, darkwave and related genres, it's really obvious. First off this isn't a retread of The Assassination of Julius Ceaser (the authours main supposed sin of the album), which sounded like earlier Depeche Mode/Gary Numan before they were commercially successful (seriously listen to Black Celebration then listen to Violator). Secondly, this person has never heard a VNV or Covenant album in their lives if they think this sounds like either of those bands or futurepop in general (there's no trance or industrial elements on Flowers of Evil for starters). Heck, those two named bands haven't sounded even close to each other since 2002 and even then listen to Northern Lights and listen to Futureperfect then tell me they didn't have distinct sounds. Then they say there's lo-fi elements comparable to vapourwave and Witch House. I hate vapourwave and there isn't a trace of that here. I love Witch House and there's also no trace of that here either. Lastly there's the gem of the songs having ABBA song structures... you heard it here folks ABBA invented the standard verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus structure...

It does have a shit tonne of Prog and Art rock elements as well as lo-fi ambient influences that are never brought up though... The paragraph on lyrics also draws out a tortured "I know who Current 93 are" point, apparently oblivious to the fact that Christian themes have been on Ulver albums since... 1998 (because William Blake and all that).

I'm not going to pretend that I know the rules for reviews these days but I still read plenty of reviews here and I am amazed that this was accepted. So much of it is fat and the meat there is is just wrong. It's fine if you don't like it, heck the review beneath it isn't exactly glowing but at least it talks about the music and why they feel it's bland, rather than just hide behind "its fine, name drop name drop name drop".

I don't know the album but I'd say it would be a pretty huge typo for a review so attentive to language, so I'd think he refers to ABAB as a rhyming pattern. Regardless of that, I strongly doubt it has potential to be removed, but who knows.

Speaking of which, I'd like to bump my latest comment:


I know assessing old reviews isn't really a priority of the mods, but I honestly can't think of any universe where they could be accepted nowadays, the best thing going for them being the fact that they're all for virgin releases iirc. A teaser (his most recent one):

Urgh, yet again I find my lysdexia tripping me over (despite my double checking...). You are correct.

Regardless, I stand by my critique: the review is very poor, extremely pretentious and not a valid critique of the album.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ror/38581/

Review doesn't exactly say much.

And another brief one from the old days;

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ge/220152/

EDIT: Seems like all his reviews consist of this ''the guitars this, the vocals that'' formula. The other ones might be worth checking too.

https://www.metal-archives.com/user-reviews/chongbong

Old Tad Morose review that's probably not needed anymore; https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... vixen/5804

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... tie/348473

This review for Unto Others' I Believe in Halloween only consists of two short paragraphs and reads like a review from the early years of the millennium. The songs are barely described as generic adjectives such as ''monotone'' and ''boring'' are used that give readers no idea whatsoever what the music actually sounds like.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... rad/246757

This review here is a total cringefest. The author describes that the music on here is better than on The King of Pain, a record the reviewer gave forty percent. The review then goes on a lengthy ideological rant, ironically complaining about the apparentely political lyrics on this output. The reviewer accuses the band to be close to far-right ideologies, even though there is little to no evidence for this in the lyrics. The reviewer explains this by claiming that only expats like him and a few nerds understand the band's hidden hints in the cowardly lyrics. One entire paragraph is dedicated to the greatness of Ronnie James Dio and how he surely wouldn't have liked the band's tribute to him. That whole rant is misguided political propaganda that attempts to give the band a bad name but it certainly isn't a review of a music album.

- The first review is only two paragraphs long because the release in question only contains two songs that barely broach three and a half minutes each. There's only so much to say on singles and exceptionally short releases like that. Maybe it could stand to be a bit more descriptive but I don't find it to be a problem here since it's a weird novelty release from an established band so it stands to reason most people who are reading probably already have an idea of what Unto Others sounds like. I wouldn't let it fly on an obscure band or anything but this one seems like a non-problem.

- The second review is pretty explicit in basing itself on the lyrics and how repulsive/cowardly they are, which is totally fine. Maybe there'd be a discussion to be had about some record exclusively based on I dunno LotR or something and one of the members happens to hold sketchy political views totally outside the context of the band or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. It sounds like it carries a pretty blunt political message and it's 1000% fair to critique that. That is part of the total package (and he puts in the legwork to analyze the instrumental component earlier in the review anyway) so there's nothing that deserves to be canned here.

- I can't help but notice that both of these reviews just so happen to be negative reviews for releases with only two total reviews, and in both cases the other review is a positive one from you. So I'm gonna say tough titty, they're staying.

No problem at all, thanks for the quick feedback!

I rarely bring up reviews in this thread as I usually don't care, but seriously how on Earth did THIS review get accepted? This is worse than the excessive rants on MetalSucks.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ss/1416300

Any time I read "why do people like x so much?" I just tune it out.

Maiden's new stuff really makes people deranged I guess.

I read through it a couple times, and at no point does the review describe the music on the album. It just goes off on one big tangent about how the band apparently hasn't been original for over 3 decades.

Musical description is hardly there, I agree about that. If anyone of you actually got through checking his bio, it all checks out. It's like the guy is still stuck in the mid-00s. Above the general cringe, there's the good ol' '22 morons running after a ball' criticism to soccer (hey look at me, I hate soccer, worship me I'm so smart) and a fantastic Top 10 VERY Overrated Albums:


I mean, just write 'I actually don't like metal very much, after all' and just be done with it

We don't want fascist promotion here. The third paragraph of this review is extremely cringe.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... lt/395098/

What the fuck? I'm laughing at it because I can't understand how this made it through the filter.

Tossed.

Don't forget "Anime is God." Hoo boy. Bad doggo. Bad, BAD doggo.

Ooh yeah, how could I? But the whole thing is mindblowing after all. The genesis of his username is one of the most poser things I can imagine - coming from such a wannabe-true metalhead, it's almost poetic. He gives me huge Comic Book Guy vibes, but it doesn't feel nearly as funny as The Simpsons made it to be.

That being said, I might be a masochist but I'm really curious to see something more from him. Either here or in the Crappy Diem thread

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... side/80820

Some cringe NSBM praise about how its good because it's hateful.

Came across this: https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... Skyklad/96

Very bare bones, formatting issues, and I can't deny I chuckled at this reviewer referring to Omen's JD Kimball as 'J. D. Campbell'. Feels like it probably oughta be nuked.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... wood/19596

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... her/295240

Review author name: cgsather
Band member: Cam Sather

And the user has no other modification history other than the review and adding the musician in question and another guy.

Coincidence?

Looks like the review was deleted, but I thought MA allowed artists to review their own music, that it was only frowned upon but not banned or anything?

We do to an extent. You can review your own work, so long as you disclose that you are the artist in the review and make it clear whether you contributed to the album. We will scrutinize these reviews a bit more than others, especially if they're a glowing review for a newly released album or for another album in advance of an upcoming album (as was the situation in this case). This one was definitely accepted in error.

Generally, though, it's in poor taste to review your own band. Sometimes these reviews can be interesting from a behind-the-scenes way, as is the case with some of these reviews on MA, but if it's obvious it's just there to promote one's own work... nah... fuck that.

Thanks for clarification.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... erott/9872

Super brief and hardly descriptive.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... on/928356/

super short and doesn't describe the music in any way. Spends a paragraph on the vocals, yet the reader has no idea what they even sound like.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... rrant/6047

Title and score don't match and it reads like a brief review UltraBoris would have written back in his day.

Another super brief one: https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... hocles/123

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... teizen/975

This review is terrible. Track-by-track that's survived since 2004 despite being full of expletives and short on valuable criticism. You honestly don't get a very good idea of what the album or songs sound like other than "shit" and "shitty".

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... G06/953525

This one confused me quite a bit. Guy calls the demo raw and powerful, yet gives it a 57% only.

The second half of the review lists the negatives of the release (poor production, underdeveloped songwriting) that would warrant that score. The impression I got from the reviewer is it's raw and powerful but it's missing something more.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... Devil/9648

Hardly descriptive

Hello
https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... Anchor6371

There's a lot of talk about UltraBoris' 0% Master of Puppets review but his review of Angel Dust is truly disastrous, it's a track by track review where he implies that this 1993 album was influenced by "mallcore", whose first recognized record is from 1994:



Apparently they wanted to sound like nu-metal:



Also the term "mallcore" is cringe.

Thanks

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... eiha/25005

The user has a lot of short reviews but this one is really too generic to form a decent impression of the album in my opinion.

...and, ahem, trying for the last time with this: https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... _Ice/24874

Nothing against him of course but all his 4 writings have plenty of typos, missing puntuation and stuff, short length besides.

I think this review is very much cringeworthy. He's not criticizing the album itself, but attacking the artist for not being "cvlt" enough. He even claims it's a decent pop album, which is what she was going for; however because it's not metal and he's on Encyclopedia Metallum, he is giving it a shitty score. Really shouldn't be on here, whatever your opinions on the artist are (I happen to dislike her metal, but this one is pretty good).

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... an/1320055

Just a question, one of my reviews has been removed. It must be one of those I wrote before March 2018. Maybe an admin can tell me something about this. Thanks in advance!

wcnmvp's review for Scarred for Life is fine, but he starts off the paragraph with the following:


The rules of writing a review clearly state you can't mention other reviews/reviewers, especially in a manner that wcnmvp did, and I don't think it fits in the grand scheme of things. I'd recommend giving it back to him so he can remove that paragraph.

Disagree. He does not quote any other reviewers or bring up their points, he merely uses that paragraph to discuss what consensus the reviews up to this point had reached. I'm not a mod and my opinion has no weight, but that's just my two cents.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... 123/101682

By far the worst Powerslave review, track-by-track and full of misspellings. Reviews before this one are better. If a generous mod feels it should stay, he could correct the spelling errors or delete it instead, or forward the draft to the user for editing.